Wikipedia as resistance

After Wikipedia made its debut in 2001, some trends quickly emerged. Most editors were male, topics tended to skew toward geek culture interests like computing and gaming, and only a small fraction of biographies were about women.

More than two decades later, biases and knowledge gaps on Wikipedia of all sorts remain, especially for marginalized communities. But a UC Berkeley professor and her students are working to change that.

Since 2016, ethnic studies professor Juana María Rodríguez has partnered with Wiki Education to teach a range of courses in which students create and edit Wikipedia articles about the contributions of LGBTQ people, especially queer and trans people of color.

“Wikipedia is a public-facing project — it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world,” says Rodríguez. “In a political moment where these histories are actively being erased from public view, having students work on a platform like Wikipedia becomes even more important.”

This is the second episode of a new Berkeley Voices season, featuring UC Berkeley scholars working on life-changing research and the people whose lives are changed by it.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-voices).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia.

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